Report Shows Just How Unusual Past 2 Years Were For Electric Customers

CL&P Customers Averaged 7 Days Without Power In 2011, 2012 Combined

Connecticut Light & Power customers endured an average of seven days without electricity in the past two calendar years, says a recently released report on the reliability of the state's electric distribution companies.

Outages over those two storm-battered years, 2011 and 2012, dwarfed those of previous years. Adding the customers' average outages for the previous 15 years totals roughly 3.5 days.

The report, filed annually with the state Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, isn't a major surprise to the state, which spent days without power during Tropical Storm Irene and the freak October snowstorm in 2011, all that followed by the reprise known as Storm Sandy in 2012. But the figures give a clearer view than has been seen into how the state's major electric distribution companies are dealing with more frequent extreme weather.

The unusual nature of the past two years was clear in the new data, released Aug. 9. The report shows that the 2011-12 yearly average for time without power was 86 hours. The 1996-2010 yearly average was 6 hours.

"The question on this is what is the new normal, if there is a new normal," said West Hartford energy consultant Joel Gordes.

Though he isn't convinced the storms of the past two years are a preamble for new weather standard, Gordes said the complexity of the electric grid, which distributes power throughout New England, has increased the likelihood of more widespread outages.

"As you make a system more complex, it magnifies the effect of one small glitch in one place having an impact over a much larger landscape," he said.

Regulators, which see these reliability numbers as a valuable tool and are required by law to present them to the legislature each year, criticized CL&P's response to the two major 2011 storms, which sent hundreds of thousands into the dark.

"Insuring the restoration of service is a daily activity for the utilities," Art House, chairman of PURA, said in an interview. "We are a society that is heavily reliant on electricity, and electricity is being knocked out all the time."

Last year had five major storms — including Storm Sandy — which pushed the average customer's experience of outages to 2,058 minutes, or almost a day and a half.

Sandy alone caused 39 million customer-hours of outages. Other major storms include: thunderstorms June 22; thunderstorms July 18; rain and wind Sept. 18; and snow and wind Nov. 7.

The 2012 tally is a big improvement from 2011, when the average CL&P customer had 8,279 minutes, or 5.75 days, without power. Irene led to about 58 million customer-hours without power, while the snowstorm in late October caused 107 million customer-hours in the dark.

Outages, no surprise, are mostly caused by those major storms. In 2012, 56 percent of CL&P outages were during those five major storms. Trees and limbs falling — not during storms — caused 19 percent of outages, with equipment failures, animals, accidents, lightning and other miscellaneous causes filling out the rest.

Customers of United Illuminating — the state's second largest electric utility, serving about 7 percent of the state's geographic area — averaged about 4,634 minutes, or three days without power, in 2011 and 2012 combined. In the prior 15 years, the same customer saw 1,883 minutes, or just over a day in the dark.